Fake news, online hate swell Indonesia anti-Rohingya sentiment

France 24
Issued on: 03/02/2024 

Jakarta (AFP) – Arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid Bangladesh camps after weeks at sea late last year, hundreds of Rohingya refugees came to shore only to be turned around and pushed back. 

In December, hundreds of people entered a government building in Banda Aceh hosting 137 Rohingya, kicking refugees' belongings and demanding they be deported © CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN / AFP/File 

 

The persecuted Myanmar minority were previously welcomed in the ultra-conservative Aceh province, with many locals sympathetic because of their own long history of war. But a wave of more than 1,500 refugees in recent months has been treated differently.

'Stranded' Rohingyas land on Bangladesh coast

THE STRAITSTIMES
2020.05.02

Rohingya refugees are seen in Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, on March 24, 2020.PHOTO: AFP

COX'S BAZAR (AFP) - Dozens of Rohingya refugees believed to have come from two boats stranded at sea for weeks as they tried to reach Malaysia landed on the Bangladesh coast on Saturday (May 2), Rohingya community leaders said.

Bangladesh has refused to let the two trawlers carrying about 500 people land on its territory despite UN calls to allow them in as a powerful storm bears down on the region.